Summary
This South of the Border comedy thriller brings an impressive cast but doesn’t always know what to do with them.
The term “gringo” is often used disparagingly to refer to any non-Spanish speaker or foreigner. In most pop culture, it’s specifically about Americans as viewed from Mexico. At a time when US-Mexican relations are at their most fraught in decades, Nash Edgerton’s GRINGO is far from being the totem of cultural harmony.
In fact, it might be one of the most over-engineered films in recent memory. A mild-mannered executive, Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo), is sent by his friend and boss Richard (Joel Edgerton) to Mexico. After finding out that Richard and his company’s co-owner Elaine (Charlize Theron) are planning to sell up and fire Harold, he pretends to be kidnapped by the cartel. Richard calls his former mercenary brother Mitch (Sharlto Copley) to rescue Harold. It gets more convoluted from there.
The fact that we couldn’t fit all of the principal cast into a paragraph of plotting speaks to how overstuffed this film is. There’s a parallel plot featuring guitar shop clerk Sunny (Amanda Seyfried) and her boyfriend Miles (Harry Treadaway), who are in Mexico to bring back an experimental marijuana pill. When all is said and done, it’s one of many winding paths down which Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone’s script wanders. Did we mention that Westworld‘s Thandie Newton plays Harold’s wife? It’s probably not important.
With the massive cast and multitude of plot turns, what GRINGO most sharply reminds us of are frenetic action films like Go or The Big Hit. Yet Edgerton is not up to the style of Doug Liman or Kirk Wong, and for a stuntman has some fairly formulaic action sequences. The whole thing builds to a literal Mexican stand-off after all.
The cast is terrificthough. Joel Edgerton notwithstanding, there’s a stack of award-winning actors here clearly having fun with their trip south of the border. The disarmingly funny on-screen relationship between Oyelowo and Copley’s characters is one of the highlights of the film. As the latter says of Harold, “I love your underdog thing.” Other cast members, like Harry Treadaway’s woefully underdeveloped drug mule, are just there to make up the already bloated numbers.
As the credits roll to a mariachi cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” the song acts as a metaphor for the film. It’s a quirky imitation of something that had far more thought put into it. GRINGO may not serve as a tourist campaign for Mexico, but it may just send you in search of some rad action capers from the back-catalogue.
